UCI & Israeli Initiative

The UC Irvine/Israeli Scholar Exchange Endowment for Engineering Science Program supports research activities, international collaborations and educational activities with Israeli universities, including Tel Aviv University, The Technion (Israel Institute of Technology), Ben Gurion University and Hebrew University. The program, established in 2007 with a $2 million endowment from the Samueli Foundation, seeks to build bridges between UC Irvine engineers and their Israeli counterparts, and solidify the Samueli School’s role as a global leader among engineering schools.

To date, the exchange program has supported four international engineering conferences, and the fifth is in the planning stages. The annual conferences, which rotate between UCI and Israel, each feature an area of emerging technology. In 2012, Communications 2025 was held at UCI; in 2013, innovative medical technologies was the theme for the conference held in Tel Aviv; and in 2014, energy and water technologies was the focus of the joint conference, held again in Irvine. Last year, Tel Aviv University hosted the Internet of Things 2025.

The funds also support visiting scholars – UCI Samueli School faculty who travel to Israel to give lectures, and Israeli faculty who travel here for the same reason. Additionally, the program supports both Samueli School and Israeli graduate students who seek to extend their educations by studying in each other’s countries. Upon launching the program, Dr. Henry Samueli said his hope was that it would “build new bridges between the engineering industry and the world’s great research universities, ultimately benefiting both science and industry.”